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THE MEDICAL ELECTRICIANS Dr. Scott and his Victorian Colleagues in Quackery

George Augustus Scott, although he gained notoriety (and riches) selling “electric” cure-alls, was a wide-ranging entrepreneur. Scott left behind legitimate legacies: successful manufacturing businesses in Massachusetts and London, and a famously unsuccessful mercantile cooperative in New York.

The story of ‘Dr. Scott,’ a quack peddler of Electric brushes, corsets, and belts, electric in name only, is intertwined with those of several other Victorian Medical Electricians. He mentored protégés who became infamous for quackery: Cornelius B. Harness, in England, and John R. Foran in America; and tangled with a feisty Brooklyn competitor, William C. Wilson, who later took up with Foran. George Scott was not a physician, and avoided referring to himself as Doctor except in his audacious advertisements. He did not seek personal publicity (an attribute rare among quacks) but was well known socially. Scott died a wealthy man at age 48, and his Pall Mall Electric business persisted for years, the last known advertisements appeared in the 1920s.

Here are the advertisements and adventures of Scott, Harness, Wilson, Foran and their colleagues in quackery during the latter part of the Nineteenth Century.

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Editorial Reviews

About the Author

Robert K. Waits lives in the San Francisco Bay area and is a retired Silicon Valley engineer. He became intrigued with the mysterious Dr. Scott while researching the history of safety razors (Before Gillette: The Quest for a Safe Razor). This led to unearthing the stories of the lives of George A. Scott, and his fellow “medical electricians,” who afflicted mid-Victorian America and Britain with spurious “curative appliances.”

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100 years ago, "electric" devices (mostly magnetic, not electric) were all the rage. Electricity and magnetism was relatively new to the public, and charlatans relied on ignorance to sell worthless belts, suits and gadgets purported to cure everything that ails you, and some things that don't.

Times may have changed, but quacks are still with us. It may not be "electricity" in the 21st Century; it may be Power Balance Bracelets or magic nose rings, but the principle is the same -- claim the impossible, sell to the gullible, and the truth be damned.

One think I found interesting was the infighting among quacks -- sometimes one would accuse a competitor of selling fraudulent products. Talk about the pot calling the kettle black!

This is a detailed (maybe too detailed; it's more of a reference than a narrative) history of one such niche in the History of Quackery, copiously illustrated with ads for claims that were nowhere substantiated, and products that made the sellers wealthy. It should be a lesson for all of us.

My great great aunt was involved in the Kellog Sanitarium in the mid 1800's, she went on to be a female practitioner - not quite a doctor, not quite a quack. I have thus been interested in medical practices of that era, and the differences in treatments and the generation of ridiculous devices - in contrast to the solid medical information we get today from Dr. Oz etc.

The Medical Electricians tells the story of the entrepreneurs who used nineteenth century discoveries in electricity and magnetism to promote products to cure a wide variety of illnesses. Their electric belts, corsets, brushes, combs and many other devices were designed to impart a mild electric shock, yet despite extensive claims, none provided any improvement in any of the diseases they promised. Thus all were quacks and their products worthless. Robert K. Watts charts their history, singling out George A. Scott and Cornelius B. Harness as the chief culprits, but there were many competitors in England, the U.S.A. and on the continent as well. Many of their advertisements are illustrated, and many of their patents are thoroughly described; both attest to their creativity and marketing skills, but all was to no avail. The book is thus an excellent reference to an episode that promised much and delivered little.

Quackery has no doubt existed ever since gullible people sought a cure for their real or imagined maladies, which implies that it has been practiced throughout the world for thousands of years. In America, we tend to associate quackery with "snake oil" salesmen of old, who would travel from town to town selling bottles of miracle tinctures that would cure all ones ailments. By the time the buyer realized that the tincture was ineffective, the salesman was long gone, and the buyer was left with no recourse. So the definition of a quack was initially someone who knowingly sold fraudulent health products or unproven medication but evolved to someone who sold any product with questionable or unverifiable quality or benefit.

In "the Medical Electricians" author Robert Waits focuses mainly but not exclusively on one certain quack, George A. Scott, who flourished in the late 1800s. Scott exploited people's ignorance of magnetism and electricity to successfully peddle a variety of devices from hairbrushes to insoles to corsets and on and on, which he claimed through their electro-magnetic powers would cure a multitude of ailments. Unlike his snake oil precursors, Scott maintained a permanent address, both in New York and in London from which he built a large mail-order business. Eventually, legislation would put an end to the businesses of Scott and other such charlatans, but it seems inevitable that modern-day quacks are still at work purveying their snake-oil wares on the Internet.

"The Medical Electricians" provides a wonderfully readable biography of Scott and others of his ilk, and is greatly enhanced by the degree of research which obviously went into its making. There are a multitude of footnotes, an epilog, a marvelous appendix of quack advertisements spanning 1879 to 1908, images of numerous quack products, a bibliography, notes to each chapter, and an extensive index.

A detailed, thorough and meticulous account of the lives and accomplishments of two Victorian "medical electricians," William Wilson and George A Scott, this book is a goldmine of information for anyone interested in Victorian medicine and popular culture. Lavishly illustrated with some truly wonderful old advertisements, it is a great addition to the library of anyone interested in patent medicine and Victorian history.